Much of the world cotton crop is harvested by hand, and cotton growers in many of the hand harvest regions are experiencing scarcity of laborers and rising labor costs. Often the cotton harvesting operations include a mix of hand labor and basic mechanization. Most cotton growers in the hand harvest regions cannot justify the capital required for self-propelled machines, and available small to medium sized tractors have insufficient capacity for a tractor-mounted harvester. Therefore, an efficient, low-cost cotton harvester powered by a small row-crop tractor is desirable to alleviate the burden of hand labor and shortage of labor in the many harvest regions.